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Monday, July 25, 2016

It's hot. Yes, yes, I know it's summer. Yes, I'm on a tropical island. Yes, it's supposed to be hot. I just don't think it's supposed to be this hot. I didn't grow up with air conditioning. On the hottest of days, I'd think about using a fan. These days if I move away from the fan for a minute, I feel like I want to die. It gets hard to breathe. I have started researching air conditioning options. Electricity is extremely expensive here but air conditioning is becoming a basic amenity. I guess this is global warming?

That has nothing to do with the muffins in this post - just in case you were wondering. We could pretend though. I could tell you that I dread turning on the oven because of just how hot the kitchen gets. Then I could tell you that these muffins were worth it. I'd be lying though. Wait. Let me explain. The muffins are good. That's true. But I used the toaster oven instead of the large oven. Sorry, muffins, you just weren't worth that much.

I have not been the best blogger lately. It's partly a lack of inspiration and mostly forgetting that I need to do something. We could bring things full circle and blame the heat but it's way more complicated than that. For this month's Muffin Monday, I decided to keep things simple. A simple vanilla muffin with some cinnamon swirled in. Cinnamon is my comfort zone. When I need to bake but can't think of a new thing to bake, I go for cinnamon rolls. These cinnamon swirled muffins bring me a similar comfort in much less time.

As usual, you will find links to the other Muffin Monday recipes below. Happy Monday!

Cinnamon Swirled Muffins

Yield ~9

Ingredients

Cinnamon Swirl

3 tablespoons butter, melted and still warm

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tablespoon cinnamon

Muffin Base

1 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F and grease a muffin pan.

Whisk together the cinnamon swirl ingredients and set aside. If the mixture becomes too thick, you will need to warm it in the microwave for just a coupe seconds.

In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt. In a separate container, whisk together egg, milk, sugar, oil, and vanilla. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients - mixing until just combined. There may be lumps.

Fill each muffin well half full. Add about a teaspoon of the cinnamon mixture and gently swirl it into the batter. Add more batter on top top to fill the wells to about two thirds. You can fill a plastic bag with the cinnamon mixture and pipe it in a swirl pattern on top of each muffin. Or you can drop some of the cinnamon mixture on each and then use a toothpick to gently swirl the cinnamon into the batter. Be careful not to mix it too much. If the cinnamon mixture is hardening or difficult to swirl, warm for just a couple seconds in the microwave.

Place the muffins in the preheated oven. Bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board.
Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.